The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English ChurchA major reassessment of England's break with Rome Henry VIII's reformation remains among the most crucial yet misunderstood events in English history. In this substantial new account G. W. Bernard presents the king as neither confused nor a pawn in the hands of manipulative factions. Henry, a monarch who ruled as well as reigned, is revealed instead as the determining mover of religious policy throughout this momentous period. In Henry's campaign to secure a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which led him to break with Rome, his strategy, as Bernard shows, was more consistent and more radical than historians have allowed. Henry refused to introduce Lutheranism, but rather harnessed the rhetoric of the continental reformation in support of his royal supremacy. Convinced that the church needed urgent reform, in particular the purging of superstition and idolatry, Henry's dissolution of the monasteries and the dismantling of the shrines were much more than a venal attempt to raise money. The king sought a middle way between Rome and Zurich, between Catholicism and its associated superstitions on one hand and the subversive radicalism of the reformers on the other. With a ruthlessness that verged on tyranny, Henry VIII determined the pace of change in the most important twenty years of England's religious development. |
Contents
The Divorce | 1 |
Anne Boleyn | 4 |
Henrys Campaign for the Divorce | 9 |
Henrys Case for the Divorce | 14 |
The Challenge to Papal Authority | 26 |
Threats against the Church | 43 |
1532 | 50 |
The Reformation Statutes | 68 |
The Final Suppression of the Monasteries | 433 |
Refoundations? | 442 |
The Generalisation of the Policy of Voluntary Surrenders | 445 |
The Attack on Shrines and Friars | 452 |
Government Policy 153839 | 455 |
Compliance Reluctance and Resistance | 462 |
Glastonbury Colchester and Reading | 467 |
The Making of Religious Policy | 475 |
Opposition | 73 |
Elizabeth Barton the Nun of Kent | 87 |
Bishop John Fisher | 101 |
Thomas More | 125 |
Observant Franciscans | 151 |
Charterhouses | 160 |
Syon | 167 |
Bishop Fishers Episcopal Colleagues | 172 |
Nobility Parliament and People | 199 |
Reginald Pole | 213 |
Authority and Reform | 225 |
Henry VIIIs Religion | 228 |
Visitation and Supremacy | 243 |
Reform | 247 |
The Ten Articles of 1536 | 276 |
Rebellion and Conspiracy | 293 |
Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace | 319 |
Reginald Poles Legation | 404 |
The Poles and the Marquess of Exeter | 407 |
The Proclamation of 16 November 1538 | 490 |
John Lambert | 492 |
The Injunctions of 1538 and the Proclamation of 26 February 1539 | 494 |
The Act of Six Articles | 497 |
Cranmers Religion | 506 |
Cromwells Religion | 512 |
Cromwell and the Bible | 521 |
Calais | 527 |
German Alliances | 533 |
Cromwell and Anne of Cleves | 542 |
The Fall of Thomas Cromwell | 556 |
The Fall of Cromwell and the Defence of the Middle Way | 569 |
Religious Policy from 1540 | 579 |
Conclusion | 595 |
Notes | 607 |
703 | |
713 | |
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The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church G. W. Bernard Limited preview - 2005 |